RIP, the middle class

[Tom Joad]

I think the decline was already on it's way in the 1970's.

Then Reagan put the pedal to the metal in 1981, starting with his firing of the Air Traffic Controllers. I remember that well. I was watching that on TV and saying "Right On"!. Shit those bastards were making 40 K a year for a 32 hour week, and here I was making 18K for a 40 hour week. I voted for Reagan. It was like having John Wayne in the White House. Little did I know that the right wing agenda included bending me and millions more like me over the table. Forgive me Father for I knew not what I was doing.


http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/rip_...ass_1946_2013/

I know I’m dating myself by writing this, but I remember the middle class.

I grew up in an automaking town in the 1970s, when it was still possible for a high school graduate — or even a high school dropout — to get a job on an assembly line and earn more money than a high school teacher.

“I had this student,” my history teacher once told me, “a real chucklehead. Just refused to study. Dropped out of school, a year or so later, he came back to see me. He pointed out the window at a brand-new Camaro and said, ‘That’s my car.’ Meanwhile, I was driving a beat-up station wagon. I think he was an electrician’s assistant or something. He handed light bulbs to an electrician.”

In our neighbors’ driveways, in their living rooms, in their backyards, I saw the evidence of prosperity distributed equally among the social classes: speedboats, Corvette Stingrays, waterbeds, snowmobiles, motorcycles, hunting rifles, RVs, CB radios. I’ve always believed that the ’70s are remembered as the Decade That Taste Forgot because they were a time when people without culture or education had the money to not only indulge their passions, but flaunt them in front of the entire nation. It was an era, to use the title of a 1975 sociological study of a Wisconsin tavern, of blue-collar aristocrats.

continued

[Dondilion]

The air traffic controllers play right into his hands. They lost the sympathy of
the envious working class with their illegal action. Reagan set the tone on
how to deal with unions.

However before that Nixon went to China and released a people who completely outfoxed the Americans.

And after that Clinton set up NAFTA, despite Ross Perot warning about the sucking sound coming from south of the border.

[finnbow]

The PATCO thing is one of the few right things that RayGun did. His Great Lie, Reaganomics, phucked the country over for years to come.

[mpholland]

Originally Posted by finnbow

The PATCO thing is one of the few right things that RayGun did. His Great Lie, Reaganomics, phucked the country over for years to come.

And still is. I find it interesting how once something is implemented in government, it gains a bit of momentum and is almost impossible to reverse.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by finnbow

The PATCO thing is one of the few right things that RayGun did.

How do you figure that?

At the time I thought it was great too, but now I see it set a really bad precedent.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

How do you figure that?

At the time I thought it was great too, but now I see it set a really bad precedent.

You can't let a public sector union strike, prohibited by law (5 U.S.C. (Supp. III 1956) 118p) from striking, cripple the nation's air traffic. They took a stupid, provocative position and got shitcanned for it.

[one1]

the presence of a middle class is very strong,ask the lower middle and the poor.I feel for the middle cause there percentile has to work the hardest to keep a decent standard of living going,But at the same same it is the strongest and proudest part of the American Population.

[MrPots]

It's also the most heavily taxed as a percentage of income.

[one1]

I was part of the middle class at one time ,I do not miss it a bit.plus I can still get my audio gear ,it just takes a while now,but I can listen to it stress free.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by one1

I was part of the middle class at one time ,I do not miss it a bit.plus I can still get my audio gear ,it just takes a while now,but I can listen to it stress free.

Yeah, being poor is awesome.

Fuck that, Cleon.

Dave